10 Cool Things You Can Do With Your Smartphone Smartphone sales are booming and this year alone nearly 920 million smartphones will be shipped, according to research firm IDC. In all, 1.5 billion smartphones will be shipped by 2017 and they will make up two-thirds of the worldwide mobile phone market. Smartphones have become such a daily part of our lives that we use them for everything from email to instant messaging, online banking to mobile payments, watching videos to gaming. But some companies have been building new features and software to take the smartphone revolution to a whole new level. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month was a chance for tech companies to show off some unusual uses. Here’s our list of the 10 coolest ones.
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10 Cool Things You Can Do With Your Smartphone

Smartphone sales are booming and this year alone nearly 920 million smartphones will be shipped, according to research firm IDC. In all, 1.5 billion smartphones will be shipped by 2017 and they will make up two-thirds of the worldwide mobile phone market.

Smartphones have become such a daily part of our lives that we use them for everything from email to instant messaging, online banking to mobile payments, watching videos to gaming.

But some companies have been building new features and software to take the smartphone revolution to a whole new level. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month was a chance for tech companies to show off some unusual uses. Here’s our list of the 10 coolest ones.

Randi Zuckerberg Talks Up Silicon Valley Reality Show The upcoming tech reality TV show, titled “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” will air Nov. 5 on the Bravo network. It will give viewers a glimpse of just how competitive the start-up scene is, said Zuckerberg, who is the executive producer of the program. Full story
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Randi Zuckerberg Talks Up Silicon Valley Reality Show

The upcoming tech reality TV show, titled “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” will air Nov. 5 on the Bravo network. It will give viewers a glimpse of just how competitive the start-up scene is, said Zuckerberg, who is the executive producer of the program.

Full story

Source: cnbc.com

Microsoft Announces Surface Tablet/PC When Steve Ballmer took the stage at Microsoft’s mysterious press event in Hollywood, the bloggers in the audience gasped, but they didn’t start to applaud until they saw just what the Surface tablet/PC hybrid he announced could do. After a long prologue about Microsoft’s legacy of launching hardware — from the mouse to the XBOX — Ballmer debuted the tablet designed to work with Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system — “its own companion hardware innovation.” What really distinguishes Surface from Apple’s iPad is the fact that it has all the computing power of a PC, and with snap-in keyboards and a kick stand, it actually turns into a mini laptop. Full Story Photo:Bloomberg | Getty Images
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Microsoft Announces Surface Tablet/PC

When Steve Ballmer took the stage at Microsoft’s mysterious press event in Hollywood, the bloggers in the audience gasped, but they didn’t start to applaud until they saw just what the Surface tablet/PC hybrid he announced could do.

After a long prologue about Microsoft’s legacy of launching hardware — from the mouse to the XBOX — Ballmer debuted the tablet designed to work with Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system — “its own companion hardware innovation.”

What really distinguishes Surface from Apple’s iPad is the fact that it has all the computing power of a PC, and with snap-in keyboards and a kick stand, it actually turns into a mini laptop.

Full Story


Photo:Bloomberg | Getty Images

Source: cnbc.com

10 Hottest Videogames of 2012 There’s no better place to get a look at what’s coming down the road than E3 – but too often, the games that get the bulk of the spotlight won’t be out until the following year (or two, or sometimes three). Selecting a “best of show” game is a fool’s mission, given the number of titles on display and the limited time to see them all. But it is possible to get a better sense of which games will connect with players.  We’ve compiled a list of the games you can expect to be in demand come the holiday season. See the full list Photo: Microsoft
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10 Hottest Videogames of 2012

There’s no better place to get a look at what’s coming down the road than E3 – but too often, the games that get the bulk of the spotlight won’t be out until the following year (or two, or sometimes three).

Selecting a “best of show” game is a fool’s mission, given the number of titles on display and the limited time to see them all. But it is possible to get a better sense of which games will connect with players. 

We’ve compiled a list of the games you can expect to be in demand come the holiday season.

See the full list


Photo: Microsoft

Source: cnbc.com

The Department of Energy is Under Attack…Cyber Attack Hundreds of pages of emails released Thursday to CNBC in response to a Freedom of Information Act request paint a picture of a federal agency aggressively responding to a series of what it sees as hostile attempts by private sector firms to access its website at times when market-moving economic data are released to the public. In a letter to CNBC, the Department of Energy revealed that the federal government is mounting an “ongoing investigation of a confidential nature” into the activities of private sector firms accessing the Department’s website. The documents released “are records that were compiled for the purposes of monitoring, detecting and enforcing potential violations of certain Federal laws and regulations,” wrote Alexander Morris, the FOIA officer for the Department of Energy’s Office of Information Resources. Full Story Photo: Photodisc | Getty Images
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The Department of Energy is Under Attack…Cyber Attack

Hundreds of pages of emails released Thursday to CNBC in response to a Freedom of Information Act request paint a picture of a federal agency aggressively responding to a series of what it sees as hostile attempts by private sector firms to access its website at times when market-moving economic data are released to the public.

In a letter to CNBC, the Department of Energy revealed that the federal government is mounting an “ongoing investigation of a confidential nature” into the activities of private sector firms accessing the Department’s website.

The documents released “are records that were compiled for the purposes of monitoring, detecting and enforcing potential violations of certain Federal laws and regulations,” wrote Alexander Morris, the FOIA officer for the Department of Energy’s Office of Information Resources.



Photo: Photodisc | Getty Images

Source: cnbc.com

The Inside Story on the Making of Nintendo’s Wii U Judging by the lines at Nintendo’s E3 booth, Nintendo’s Wii U is a hit, but the system could have been a lot different if Nintendo had listened to its inner demons.  Global President Satoru Iwata says the idea of a two-screen, video game system was something the company went back and forth on—and didn’t finalize until nearly a year and a half into the development process. Work on the Wii U began in 2008—one year after the Wii hit retail shelves and began to take over the videogame industry. But there was much internal debate before the schematics were finalized. Full Story See Complete Coverage on E3 Photo: Nintendo
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The Inside Story on the Making of Nintendo’s Wii U

Judging by the lines at Nintendo’s E3 booth, Nintendo’s Wii U is a hit, but the system could have been a lot different if Nintendo had listened to its inner demons.  Global President Satoru Iwata says the idea of a two-screen, video game system was something the company went back and forth on—and didn’t finalize until nearly a year and a half into the development process.

Work on the Wii U began in 2008—one year after the Wii hit retail shelves and began to take over the videogame industry. But there was much internal debate before the schematics were finalized.

Full Story


See Complete Coverage on E3


Photo: Nintendo

Source: cnbc.com

Electronic Arts Targets Hard-Core Gamers, Social, Mobile Electronic Arts is trying to adapt to the new digital landscape. EA is going to where the consumers are, launching Madden Social, which works across Facebook and smartphones. Start the game on Facebook and finish it on your iPhone — it’s cross platform. And the game is free. COO Peter Moore also re-cast EA Sports Football Club as “football’s social network.” The idea is that FIFA is already a social network for fans of the sport, now EA will enable fans to connect to their FIFA experiences on any device, at any time, and to connect to each other. The goal is to get fans to play more and longer. Full Story Photo: EA
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Electronic Arts Targets Hard-Core Gamers, Social, Mobile

Electronic Arts is trying to adapt to the new digital landscape.

EA is going to where the consumers are, launching Madden Social, which works across Facebook and smartphones. Start the game on Facebook and finish it on your iPhone — it’s cross platform. And the game is free. COO Peter Moore also re-cast EA Sports Football Club as “football’s social network.” The idea is that FIFA is already a social network for fans of the sport, now EA will enable fans to connect to their FIFA experiences on any device, at any time, and to connect to each other. The goal is to get fans to play more and longer.

Full Story


Photo: EA

Source: cnbc.com

Will New Videogame Consoles Sell? As Nintendo prepares to launch the Wii U later this year and Microsoft and Sony gear up for expected 2013 launches for their next generation consoles, there’s a sense of excitement building in the videogame industry — but there’s also a sense of fear. The market has changed considerably since the launch of the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 — and while new console launches used to be a surefire way to reinvigorate both core and casual gamers, nobody’s certain if that will happen this time. Full Story Photo:Wikipedia | Tokyoship
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Will New Videogame Consoles Sell?

As Nintendo prepares to launch the Wii U later this year and Microsoft and Sony gear up for expected 2013 launches for their next generation consoles, there’s a sense of excitement building in the videogame industry — but there’s also a sense of fear.

The market has changed considerably since the launch of the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 — and while new console launches used to be a surefire way to reinvigorate both core and casual gamers, nobody’s certain if that will happen this time.

Full Story


Photo:Wikipedia | Tokyoship

Source: cnbc.com

‘Modern Warfare’ Not 2012’s Best-Selling Game to Date There aren’t a lot of sure bets in the video game industry, but for the past few years the “Call of Duty” franchise was a pretty safe place to put your money. The past three installments of the game have set consecutive entertainment-industry sales records at their launch. And even after the holiday season ended, they’ve led the sales pack for at least the first few months of the following year — but not this year. Electronic Arts’ “Mass Effect 3” is, at present, the year’s best-selling game.  Full Story Photo: Getty Images
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‘Modern Warfare’ Not 2012’s Best-Selling Game to Date

There aren’t a lot of sure bets in the video game industry, but for the past few years the “Call of Duty” franchise was a pretty safe place to put your money. The past three installments of the game have set consecutive entertainment-industry sales records at their launch. And even after the holiday season ended, they’ve led the sales pack for at least the first few months of the following year — but not this year.

Electronic Arts’ “Mass Effect 3” is, at present, the year’s best-selling game. 

Full Story


Photo: Getty Images

Source: cnbc.com

Spotify’s Sean Parker and Daniel Ek on Music and Piracy Sean Parker transformed the music industry once with Napster, now he’s doing it again with Spotify, where he’s now a director. He and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took the stage at the D conference to talk about Spotify’s new music model. They’re not going after Apple’s business, they’re competing with piracy. And in the process they’re redefining how people find music — now through their friends— and how they buy it — in play lists, instead of singles and albums. Spotify has 18 million songs to Apple’s 31 million, but Ek says it has the most important ones — people listen to 80 percent of their music.  Full Story Photo: Jon Aslund
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Spotify’s Sean Parker and Daniel Ek on Music and Piracy

Sean Parker transformed the music industry once with Napster, now he’s doing it again with Spotify, where he’s now a director. He and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took the stage at the D conference to talk about Spotify’s new music model. They’re not going after Apple’s business, they’re competing with piracy. And in the process they’re redefining how people find music — now through their friends— and how they buy it — in play lists, instead of singles and albums.

Spotify has 18 million songs to Apple’s 31 million, but Ek says it has the most important ones — people listen to 80 percent of their music. 

Full Story


Photo: Jon Aslund

New Google Tablet Set to Defend the Android Market Google’s 7-inch Android tablet is real — it’s even being passed around inside the Googleplex. Google needs this tablet to defend Android. The arrival of Amazon’s Kindle Fire blew a hole in the ecosystem, with Amazon setting up its own app store and its own look and feel for Android itself. If this 7-inch tablet is a hit, Google can argue that developers should still build tablet apps to Google’s specs, not Amazon’s. Full Story Photo: Googleappscentral.com
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New Google Tablet Set to Defend the Android Market

Google’s 7-inch Android tablet is real — it’s even being passed around inside the Googleplex. Google needs this tablet to defend Android. The arrival of Amazon’s Kindle Fire blew a hole in the ecosystem, with Amazon setting up its own app store and its own look and feel for Android itself. If this 7-inch tablet is a hit, Google can argue that developers should still build tablet apps to Google’s specs, not Amazon’s.

Full Story


Photo: Googleappscentral.com

Source: cnbc.com

Is Lady Gaga a Facebook Killer? Lady Gaga is launching her own social network this Summer, but the niche social website isn’t meant to lure people away from Facebook, said Matthew Michelsen, CEO and founder of The Backplane, the start-up company that is building Lady GaGa’s social network. Full Story Photo: Getty Images
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Is Lady Gaga a Facebook Killer?

Lady Gaga is launching her own social network this Summer, but the niche social website isn’t meant to lure people away from Facebook, said Matthew Michelsen, CEO and founder of The Backplane, the start-up company that is building Lady GaGa’s social network.

Full Story

Photo: Getty Images

Source: cnbc.com

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